Marketer's Essence On Video Marketing

Provides Value To Customers using Content

Consumers nowadays are not satisfied to what is told in an advertisement, they demand for interactive and more value before making a buying decision. Especially with the increasing influential power through social media, giving out valuable content is one of the most important direction in capturing eyeballs in marketing.

Contents can be delivered in many ways: written articles in magazines, blogs, printed materials, social media, offline events etc. While majority part of contents used to be in text format, the use of photos, illustrations, audio, video become an inevitable part of the messages. The younger generation have decreasing patient to read only text messages and more inclined on visual impact. Using of colors, eye-catching photos, motion cartoons complimented with audio, music... the more senses involved, the better. Amongst all these formats, video is one which delivers audio and visual impact at the same time easy for production and delivered across medias.

Video Marketing: The Future Of Content Marketing

No wonder according to Forbes, video Marketing is the future of content marketing. "In today’s fast-paced world, video marketing is one of the few types of online material that provides the value, relevance and flexibility consumers need, all while catering to the on-the-go lifestyle they want."

As quoted from the article, below figures may give you a better idea of why marketers are more and more into video marketing:

Video is projected to claim more than 80% of all web traffic by 2019.

Adding a video to marketing emails can boost click-through rates by 200-300%.

90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions.

According to YouTube, mobile video consumption grows by 100% every year.

64% of customers are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video about it.

87% of online marketers are currently using video content in their digital marketing strategies.

A third of all the time people spend online is dedicated to watching videos.

Video ads now account for more than 35% of all ad spending online.

59% of company decision makers would rather watch a video than read an article or blog post.

Digital marketing expert James McQuivey estimates that a single minute of video content is the equivalent of 1.8 million words.

The article also stated the 5 benefits of using video marketing, which is shortlisted below:

Video content promotes brand recall.

Video marketing can boost your site’s SEO.

Video content performs well on all devices.

Video marketing can help strengthen your brand message.

Video content wants to go viral.

So how can you, as a marketers, or business owners whether large corporate or SMEs or even a freelancer, make use of this new and important trend of video marketing? What are the criteria of a video that gets your message spread out and shared so viral effect is achieved?

Criteria Of Video That Gets Viral

First of all, please understand the delivery channels of your video. Are your target viewers use desktop to watch your video and can be there for hours? Or they are smart phone users who watch your video in time breaks?

Unless you conduct online classes that require watchers to sit and watch for half an hour or so, most videos are watched on smart phones. That would means:

the screen is relatively small in compare to desktop. meaning your video should have a clear and simple layout. Close up zoom in in case of small objects displayed

viewers have only short time in between waiting time, traveling etc. So your video should be short, perfectly less than 3 minutes

they may be viewing the video in public area and n most case, may not turn on the volume. Your video should have simple and big captions

people have shorter attention span in front of overwhelming information. Your video should provide useful information, or funny story, or heartfelt impressive messages

use of eye-catching colors, bold words, and actions can be an attraction on certain topics.

Video Marketing Platforms/Distribution Channels

Nearly everyone knows about YouTube, the world largest video platform. You can upload and share your video easily through sending a link in an email, on Facebook and other social media, or embedded in your website. Other popular alternatives are : Vimeo and Flickr.

From a marketer's point of view, most of these platform allows members to have their own channels so certain targeting and market segment can be achieved. There is no sorting of video length nor format, however in these platform. Therefore visitors can only search according to keywords in the ocean of videos.

Targeted Video Platform For Marketers

Now there are some new video platform coming up that can be more targeted in terms of viewers and format of the videos. For example, SpeedLearn.tv as from the name, focus on visitors that like to learn things in a short time. Therefore most videos are how-to focused, teaching ways to do certain things so viewers learn something quickly. The videos are very short, from 30 seconds to maximum 3 minutes so that audience expect to finish a video even during breaks.

The platform allows trainers, marketers, business owners and workshop organizers to upload short videos that give us useful information. And with the very targeted audiences, they draw targeted video providers too. Videos uploaded have to comply with SpeedLearn.TV Guidelines and subject to approval to ensure the format and objective of the video platform is unified.

In order for best result in market segment and target, they have several channels as below:

Planning Your Video Marketing

Video marketing does not work on random, like any other marketing strategy. You have carefully plan and roll out your marketing plan as a whole. The following procedures are required for your video marketing:

2. Distribution Channels: where will people see your video? when and how they will watch the content you provide? These will determine your video length, format and content.

3. Target Audience: who are your target audience? what are their demographic data such as age, gender, education background, characters, ethic group, religion, needs, lifestyle etc Do they watch your video in at home, in the subway, or driving a car? This is important factor for every marketing strategy and highly affect your distribution channels, video content and presentation

Only when these big topics are decided, then you can determine your marketing budget, video production, casting if needed, video platform to use, any offline events to supplement etc